While the prison offers inmates books and videos on Harry Potter and the World Cup, which are among the more than 16,000 items it holds, leftist intellectual commentary from an 80-year-old MIT linguistics professor is apparently taboo. U.S. military censors rejected the donation of an Arabic-language copy of the 2007 anthology called Interventions, donated by a Pentagon lawyer.

A defense department spokesman didn’t say exactly why the book was rejected, but the slip accompanying the book’s return listed among the categories of books banned from the Guantanamo Bay prison library anything promoting “Anti-American, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Western” ideology, literature on “military topics,” and works that portray “excessive graphic violence” and “sexual dysfunctions.”

“This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes,” Chomsky told Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg in an email after he learned his book had been banned.

At the time, Palin didn’t specify which books she wanted removed from the shelves.

ABC reports that at the same time Palin was involved in the library controversy, her church was pushing to do away with a book about a teenager addicted to drugs, “Go Ask Alice,” and preacher Howard Bess’ “Pastor, I Am Gay.”

Wasilla church-goers’ efforts to ban gay literature is much like campaigns in other communities across  country. Sexuality, it seems, is regarded as one of the most controversial book topics in the United States.

TWI decided to find out just what books are the most challenged in the nation. So here’s the American Library Assn.’s list of the books subject to the most requests for removal from libraries or curricula in  2007, the latest year data is available.